


Blur

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-21 01:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4809086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason's kind of dying (again)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was music coming from somewhere, but Jason couldn’t quite make it out. He had hit his head on something— maybe during the fall— and his ears were ringing. His vision was spinning gently. The few stars that were visible in the Gotham sky were vibrating, back and forth through the smog, blurring as they crossed each others’ paths and retreated.  
Which was damn _poetic_ and all, but Jason had bigger things to worry about. There was a slab of ceramic wall lying on his chest, and it was making it hard to breathe. He was flat on his back in an alley, surrounded by wreckage from a blown out apartment, and the fire was still burning. If he wasn’t lucky, it would head right for him— and Jason wasn’t lucky. Ever.  
He pushed at the piece of wall, trying to heave it off of him, but it didn’t budge. It was part of somebody’s kitchen, probably. That didn’t really matter. It was crushing the left side of his body, and he was starting to feel a dull kind of aching underneath it, beneath his heart— he needed it gone, and soon.  
Jason peeled off his gloves and set them aside, next to his helmet. Maybe if he had a better grip… He shoved at the stone again, as hard as he could, and managed to lift it a few inches above him. He rolled out from underneath it as quickly as possible, before it dropped back down.  
A mistake, as it turned out. As his chest pulled away from the stone, he heard a _ripping_ sound, and the dull ache turned into splitting pain. Jason gasped in shock as a line of fire cut across the top of his ribs— he curled in on himself, coughing blood on the asphalt.  
Shit. Shit. He was bleeding badly. There must have been something underneath the stone— Jason turned back to his bit of wall long enough to see the jagged end of a kitchen pipe dripping underneath the ceramic.  
_A piece of rusty metal is going to kill me,_ Jason thought. _Deja fucking vu._  
He lay still for a while. His head hurt. That wasn’t helping him concentrate. He blinked at the sky, and for a few seconds the Gotham starscape multiplied into a different, brighter set of lights— thousand of stars in an African sky. Jason pushed away the image. He didn’t need to think about that right now.  
Bleeding. He was bleeding. He needed to stop the… It was hard to think straight. His memories were blurring together, and he couldn’t remember where he was. Ethiopia? Nanda Parbat? Gotham. How did he always end up back in Gotham?  
The music was playing again. Jason listened to the song, the same phrase repeating over and over. He still couldn’t place it. It sounded familiar, but—  
It was his ringtone. Jason fumbled in his belt, but by the time he lifted his phone to his face, the music had stopped. Roy’s name was blinking across his screen.  
He should call Roy back, or call _somebody_ to come and help him. He should call… Jason’s vision blurred again, back to the bright sky and an empty horizon. He remembered lying in a different set of rubble, half-crushed underneath it, pain through his entire body. Waiting for…  
Bruce. Jason slid open his phone and dialed 1, call. He started coughing again while his phone rang. There was blood in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe.  
Bruce picked up on the second ring.  
“Hello?”  
Jason frowned at his phone, confused. That was Bruce’s voice, but he remembered— Bruce didn’t come. Jason was alone under the stars. He remembered blacking out and floating away. Bruce didn’t come. He remembered that.  
“Jason?”  
Jason hung up. It didn’t matter anyway.  
He lay in the wreckage for a long time, half-awake with a hand pressed against his chest. Apply pressure. Stop the bleeding.  
He was cold. His vision was going dark. The next thing he knew, there were small hands on his chest.  
“Batman!” Jason didn’t know who was talking. “He’s here!” The hands moved up to his neck, checking for a pulse— Jason heard a sigh of relief when they found one. He forced one eye open and saw yellow.  
“Todd. Don’t move.”  
Okay. Jason lay as still as he could while the hands wrapped something tight around his ribs, muttering about how he was an idiot— an idiot who wasn’t allowed to die. Jason closed his eyes again.  
There was someone else touching him, bigger hands that slid underneath his knees and around his shoulders. Jason heard a familiar voice close to his ear.  
“Call Alfred.”  
Bruce? That wasn’t right. Bruce shouldn’t be here, but he was. Jason was confused.  
But he let Bruce carry him away.


	2. Epilogue

When Jason did wake up, it was to the familiar haze of morphine and blood loss. He felt fuzzy, insubstantial– completely weightless and terribly heavy at the same time. He didn’t like it, so he concentrated on breathing instead, in and out until the cave lights weren’t too bright anymore and he could see. Of course it was the cave. The other place he always ended up.

Damian was lying in the bed across from him. For a few seconds, Jason panicked– his eyes fastened on Damian’s hand, which dangled over the side of his sheets, spotted with dried blood. Was Damian hurt? How did that happen?  _Who hurt him?_

He tried to push himself out of bed and immediately had to stop. Oh yeah, he remembered,  _I’m_ the one who’s injured. Damian’s fine. 

He was asleep. His mask was lying on the floor beneath him, along with his cape, crumpled up and stained maroon. He was folded into Bruce’s cape instead– curled underneath it with the kevlar pressed against his cheek, hair flat along one side, face wrinkled in a worried sort of way. Jason was sorry to make him worry.

There were footsteps behind him, too heavy to be Alfred’s. Jason panicked again– he couldn’t deal with Bruce right now. He wouldn’t be able to keep his guard up. He wasn’t in any shape to fight for control, the way they’d been doing ever since Jason came back to Gotham. Nope. Couldn’t do it. Jason hastily closed his eyes again and pretended he was asleep. It wasn’t that much of a lie; Jason could already feel himself slipping. He wouldn’t be awake for much longer anyway.

He felt Bruce’s hand in his hair as he passed by. The footsteps moved away, and Jason cracked open an eye long enough to see Bruce stop at the other bed and pull his cape over Damian’s exposed arm. Damian shifted a little bit in his sleep, and Bruce kept walking. He pulled his chair out from under the computer monitor and rolled it into the aisle between them. He settled down deliberately, like he wouldn’t be moving in a while. 

Which meant Jason was stuck. Any chance of sneaking away that he might have had was ruined– he would have to stick this one out.

Whatever– he was tired anyway. Jason closed his eyes completely, for real this time, and went back to sleep. Presumably, Bruce would be there the next time he woke up too. He could deal with it then.


End file.
